Can an Alarm Clock Really Help You Sleep Better?

I drifted off to sleep cloaked in a dimming, rosy glow. Seven hours later, I awoke to a soft light that could've been from the sun had it not been for the fact that my blinds were down. Ripped from a dream, I expected to be confused and cranky—and I was, but less so than usual. For this, I thought, I should thank the alarm.

I had spent the night with the Sleepace Nox, sleeping atop a sensor and next to an onlooking alarm that were supposedly working together to wake me as gently as they'd put me to sleep. I'd slept well, I thought, even if waking up felt as abrupt as ever. But was I to thank, or was the alarm clock?

Sleep is having a moment.

For many of us, smartphones are the last thing we look at before falling asleep and the first thing we see and touch when we wake to their buzzing and beeping alarms. Some say our phones are to blame for our poor sleeping habits (though others blame demanding jobs and the nagging fear of missing out). Whatever the causes, we're not sleeping as we should be: A third of Americans don't get enough sleep, and 68 percent of Americans "struggled with sleep at least once a week," according to a Consumer Reports poll.

Some people, searching for relief (and rest), have turned to sleep sensors, wrapped around their wrists or placed under their mattresses. And now, some are drifting off and waking back up with the help of smart alarm clocks and lights, hoping that technology, a prime cause of our sleeplessness, can save our dreams.

Blue Morning, Red Night

There has been no shortage of sleep-tracking apps and gadgets over the last few years. These are often the snoozing side of fitness trackers like the Basis Peak, which aims to aid your ZZZZs via data. Now, though, we are a step beyond mere "wearables." The new wave of smart alarm clocks means to help you sleep better proactively by giving you the right light and sounds at the right time.

Sometimes, as with the Withings Aura ($190) and the Sleepace Nox ($150), they're connected to sensors ($130 for the Aura and $150 for the Nox), which give them the data they need to wake you during lighter sleep. The idea is that this makes the transition to waking less jarring than coming right out of deep sleep. With other devices, such as the Drift Light ($25), the focus is on the night—lulling you to sleep by bathing you in the redder, longer wavelengths that are supposed to stay out of the way of sleep. The Philips Wake-Up Light ($170), a dual light and alarm clock, can be set to slowly illuminate your room as an alarm sounds. Both the alarm and light start out barely noticeable and build, waking you slowly, the way that the sun or perhaps an incoming flock of birds might.

Withings Aura

Withings

The key feature, for all these sleep-inducing and morning-inviting devices, is light. Here, gadget-makers are trying to crib the real science we're learning about how the body and the body clock responds to the natural cues of the sun.

"Normally, when it gets dark, melatonin is produced," says Eric Dyken, director of the University of Iowa's Sleep Disorders Program. As melatonin levels in the blood rise, you get drowsy and, eventually, fall asleep. When the light changes from bright to dim to dark, the body knows it's time to sleep.

Just as a change in light can help a person fall asleep, so too can a change in light be used to help a person wake up—or stay awake, Dyken points out, thanks to the way certain wavelengths of light stimulate the brain's waking center. These are the short wavelengths of the blue light beamed by screens. And that's why new features like iOS's Night Shift or Android's Night Mode shift your phone toward more reddish light at bedtime.

The Tryout

I'm lucky: I usually have no trouble falling asleep. But waking up is generally awful. Putting my alarm clock out of reach was as technological as I'd gotten. So I decided to up my wake-up game and try out gadgets meant specifically for easing a person in and out of sleep.

I found the Drift Light and others to be pleasant, but also distracting. Every so often I registered the change in the light's brightness and thought I should be closer to sleep than I was. But, of course, I wasn't closer to sleep; I was too busy thinking about how I should be sleeping by now. Not to mention that because you need the phone to adjust the alarm, I was now sleeping next to my phone, something I try to avoid.

The phone isn't just bad because of the wavelengths of light it gives off—it's bad because it's a distraction. These alarm clocks, too, risk becoming distractions, more amusements than sleep aids. You can't help but be aware of the fact that there's an alarm clock watching your every move and an app asking you to choose between "sweet lullaby" and "serenity" to supposedly lull you to sleep. Plus, too many of these devices require a phone, making it impossible to let go of the very thing many people say is the reason we can't sleep in the first place.

Whatever the causes, we're not sleeping as we should be.

That's the night. It's in the mornings when these systems truly shine. You can set a window of time during which the clock will wake you—the app will look for light sleep (or what the sensor says is light sleep) and wake you accordingly. If it gets to the end of the window, it'll wake you no matter what. This is a nice idea, but I found I could take advantage of it only on weekends, when my mornings were freer and unlimited by the deadline of showing up to work. That was when I felt a few times that the clocks had done their job and woken me in lighter sleep, avoiding what's called "sleep inertia." This happens when you wake up during deep sleep, Dyken says, "and you feel terrible—worse than you did before you went to sleep." These are clocks for those with the privilege of loose mornings, of getting to work when they feel like it, not when they have to. They're clocks for those who trust gadgets to know them better than they know themselves.

When I wasn't using the Aura's and Nox's companion sensors, I still appreciated the easing into morning the light provided, especially on early weekdays. Plus, using the devices without the sensors took some of the pressure off, letting me sleep better, paradoxically, than I would have were my sleep being "optimized" by a machine—a machine meant to make sleep more "natural" by mimicking the sun, which is, of course, the very definition of unnatural.

There's Sleeping Well, and There's Sleeping Correctly

Philips Wake-Up Light

Philips

Sleep is having a moment. Which is weird to say, since we've been doing it all our lives and all through human history. But look around and you'll see people treating a good night's sleep like the next health craze. While exhaustion has become a status symbol, showing how hard we must be working to catch so few Zs, now authors are pushing back on reclaiming their bodies' down time. Sleep books abound, including Arianna Huffington's The Sleep Revolution, in which Huffington describes the current sleep "crisis" and encourages readers "to safeguard and savor the realm of sleep." Sleep, she writes, "gives us a chance to refocus the essence of who we are."

Sleep is now a lifestyle. And the first part of any lifestyle, of course, is "awareness." Awareness alone isn't enough to get people to sleep better and longer, of course. But add some gadgets, and we may be well on our way to suitable slumber. Not only are there sleep-tracking apps and sleep-tracking beds, but there are now devices that promise to help us fall asleep and wake up more easily. And these devices can be personalized, tailoring your sleep to yourself. The promise, the marketing goes, is that a good night's sleep is within reach no matter what kind of sleeper you are.

I am a good sleeper—that I can be sure of. But even with these smart alarm clocks, even with mornings that were slightly easier than they were without bright lights and arpeggiated alarms, I was still tired. Were the gadgets malfunctioning, or was I? Or were we just incompatible?

Or was it that the gadgets (and that pesky awareness) weren't enough? The dream of a better night's rest isn't realized entirely with these gadgets and calls for lifestyle changes, at least not yet. That'll come when we not only rejigger our bedtime and wake-up routines but when we rejigger our entire days, making them less opposed to sleep, less the opposite of our nights.

I gave up on using the clocks and lights a couple weeks in, after the novelty wore off and gadgets stopped being the impetus to get up each morning. It wasn't that I had nothing to wake up for—it was just that these clocks weren't it. These smart sleep aids work. But whether they'll work for you is a question of how much trust you want to put in technology.

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